


i hurt like you heal: fast and forever

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Getting Together, Multi, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Polyamory, Road Trips, They All Just Love Each Other A Lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-05 06:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12788607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: They barrel down abandon back roads, eventually each of them taking turns behind the wheel, all of them laughing until their bodies ache, and then some more out of spite.





	i hurt like you heal: fast and forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linguamortua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/gifts).



> I have wanted to write for this fandom and this pairing for so long, and I have finally done it. 
> 
> Happy Yuletide! @linguamortua I hope you enjoy this and that it’s everything you wanted!
> 
> I own nothing, enjoy!

It's ten miles past any sign of civilization and more than fifty from her brother when it hits.

The freedom, the exhilaration, the feeling of finally feeling. Knowing she’s truly free, and feeling she’s released from everything and especially the illness that plagued her, is almost like a spark of electricity down her spine.

They’re miles away from anything but Amanda still feels too close, feels too vulnerable to her illness, even though she tries her best to outrun it with every mile: the road before her offering an escape from lying brothers, lost detectives, and visions that always feel too real.

Martin’s beside her and she can hear the rest of them laughing in the back, and suddenly nowhere isn’t enough. The urge to run, to go, to leave surges through her, and she thinks it’s time she finally listened to it.

“Fuck it.” Amanda says, her boys in the back and cares miles out the window. The wheel of the Rowdy van feels like a promise every time her hands grasp it, and the controls at her fingertips take on a whole new meaning with every passing minute. Martin doesn’t look away from the road ahead, but the other three in the back quiet their laughter to listen to her snarl as her foot meets the pedal.

“Fuck it!” She shouts, the words turning into a laugh before they should, and a bitter, always too daring for as much as she’s lost, edge makes itself known. She shouts, laughs, screeches, presses on the gas and her body slams back into the cushion of her seat.

Cross, Vogel, and Gripps join in, each screaming and shouting in their own octave, and soon after Martin transfers his gaze from the road to her. His lips turn down before they turn up, and there’s too much happening for her to properly process his reactions, so she lets it go in favor of her newfound exhaustion buried beneath the hysteric laughter she wasn’t aware she had been hiding.

After minutes that feel like hours, her body finally gives, and she’s bent over the steering wheel laughing as hard as her lungs will let her, until her throat burns from use. The road’s empty and her foot’s still on the gas, and no one in the van seems alarmed at their speed or her immediate inability to alter it.

They barrel down abandon back roads, eventually each of them taking turns behind the wheel, and all of them laughing until their bodies ache, and then some more out of spite.

Martin turns to her when it’s Cross’ turn behind the wheel, and takes the seat beside her, a small smile made up of something she can’t place but makes her think _home_ forms on his lips, and she wonders if that’s what this must be, what the warm feeling in her chest from all the laugher and the smile that refuses to leave her own face must be: home.

Cross slams the gas and Gripps shouts as Vogel throws a beer can for Martin to catch, but it lands in her hands.

She holds it, stares, looks up at Vogel - sees Martin’s smile out of the corner of her eyes - and throws it as hard as she can, bends over herself laughing when he catches it only to fall back on his ass right after.

Vogel huffs, Cross smiles, Gripps laughs, and Martin shakes his head.

She can’t remember the last time home felt like this.

Amanda smiles, offers him a hand, and pretends she isn’t blinded by his shy toothy smile when he accepts.

.

They drive through the nights. She asked Cross how much they usually sleep, and he shrugged, said, “When we feel like we need to,” and that was that. She loves that it can sometimes just be that easy.

So, they drive through darkness at speeds she knows Todd would have a heart attack over, and the thought makes her smile before it makes her frown because fuck, none of its fair and all of it hurts, and too much of it’s confusing.

Amanda glances over from her position on the floor and sees Gripps’ is driving now, Vogel sitting beside him and their both whispering about something before Cross leans in and they both break apart from their conversation with a laugh.

She can see Martin too, but she would have to lean up almost entirely from her position on the ground to see the rest of him, so she settles on his head.

He’s sitting behind the rest of them, smiling. It hits her, a moment later, the emotion caught his gaze, hidden in the tilt to his smile, in the way he stares at them all: the fondness lurking in each of his actions.

It’s a gentle kind of fondness, one that she can hear in one of the softest chuckles she’s ever heard Martin give, and it’s at a joke made by Vogel at Cross’ expense. Something inside of her begins to ache as she watches Martin lean in closer to them all, almost like they are huddling, as he ruffles Vogel’s hair in a gesture of pride, and sends a playful smile Cross’ way alongside it.

Her heart lurches in her chest as she watches them, rises and plummets like the road shifting and tilting beneath their wheels and the shooting stars soaring above their roof.

Eventually, she can’t bring herself to watch them anymore. They’re too close, too intimate, and her staring feels wrong, almost disrespectful.

She lowers herself back down, and closes her eyes.

And if she thinks she feels a few sets of eyes on her as her eyes remain closed, or thinks she hears mentions of her name in hushed voices, she blames it all on a long day and an extended dream state.

She falls asleep to the sound of their combined laughter, and she can’t imagine a better lullaby.

.

The first time they stop after they leave Todd in the dirt and the rest of the world miles and miles away, Cross hands her a bat, and her stomach gives a little flutter when she realizes the weight feels perfect in her hands.

She’s the last one out, and sees everyone looking to Martin. When she turns to looks she finds Martin’s already staring at her.

Martin looks at her, smiles - quick and easy like it’s a natural thing; like him smiling at her is something he was born to do - and says, “You ready, Rowdy girl?” and she doesn’t try to hide the shiver that runs up her back like electricity at the words, like lightning flooding her veins.

And going by how his smile transforms into something deeper, something darker that’s too easy to get lost traveling down the paths of until you drown, she knows he saw it.

Cross, Gripps, and Vogel stand behind her, and she can feel them watching as she rolls her shoulders back and cracks her neck.

She pulls her own smile - too many teeth and not any of the forced kindness she’s been made to carry around for these past few years. Because the world has not been kind to her, so why should she pretend to be kind back - and says, “Fuck yeah,” not missing the way Martin’s eyes sharpen to match his smile, or the loud howls that sound a little too much like freedom echoing behind her.

When her voice joins theirs, she thinks it’s the most - beautiful, blissful, fucking fantastic - _freeing_ thing she’s ever heard.

The full gravity of the situation doesn’t hit her until later, when she realizes the smile Martin gave her as she stepped out of the van was akin to the ones she saw him give the others a few nights before, and the world freezes.

Her heart stops, restarts, stutters in her chest as she tries to adjust, and her mind begins to work.

She thinks, _first time for everything_. Thinks: _They’re worth it_. Thinks: _Fuck. It._ _All._

Her mind begins to plan, catalog every smile and joke and twisted laugh trying to put the puzzle pieces together before she pursues, and God, she can’t remember the last time life felt this thrilling.

.

They stop next in the evening. When the sun has yet to fully set, and the world looks yellow around the edges, yet to be touched by night and now unclaimed by day.

The make a fire, because it’s getting cold and they still have half a packet of marshmallows left over in the trunk, and because they want to: sometimes, it’s as simple as that.

Cross and Gripps search the forest area beside them for dry leaves and wood, while she and Vogel begin to construct a fire pit, collecting as many stones as they can find and placing them in a circle.

“What’s the best way to let a fire burn?” a voice behind her speaks, and she when she turns she’s met with Martin, face masked by shadows and eyes tinted the same yellow as the rest of the world.

Vogel’s still setting stones behind her, too caught up in the repeated act to notice Amanda’s stopped, and the yellow shading on Martin’s face gets less and less with each passing second.

“What?” Amanda asks, hearing as the trees rustle above, and watching the way Martin’s smirk seems to grow with the oncoming dark.

“Let it rage,” Martin says, and she realizes she can’t see his full face anymore by how much the night has taken of it, but she smiles anyway, and when she finds herself still staring it’s half unexpected and half entranced.

They stay like that for a few more minutes, her and Vogel setting stones until Martin joins, making Vogel jump at the sudden change before he scoffs, and Martin snickers before ruffling his hair.

Gripps and Cross arrive a few minutes later, Cross with leaves and Gripps with the wood, and they set it up in the fire pit.

Amanda’s the one who pulls out her lighter.

“What’s the best way to let a fire burn?” She asks, half smiling, half daring, and when four voices answer back, “What?” she smiles, meets Martin’s smirking gaze, opens her lighter, says: “You let it _rage_.”

And when she lights the pit, the world goes white before it goes red where it was only dark before.

The leaves and wood burns and she watches it, still thinking, still listening, until an arm is placed around her shoulder, and she looks up to see Cross. He smiles. She smiles back.

Another arm lands on her shoulder and she sees Gripps. One links through her’s and she knows it’s Vogel. Martin throws an arm around her waist, and they all take it in.

“You’re something else, Drummer girl,” Gripps says.

The moon is hidden behind the clouds, the night dark, and the fire is too hot, too sharp, too real in the moment, and she throws her head back with a laugh, says, “So I’ve been told,” and then rights herself with a snicker.

The arms around her are still strong and unwavering, linking like silent pleas to stay, and so she wraps an arm around Cross’ shoulder and one around Gripps’, pulls them all in close and she leans in until their unified warmth is the only thing left to battle the newfound cold.

“Now,” Amanda starts, “who wants marshmallows?”

.

She sees the way Vogel looks at her. She sees how they all look - how Cross smirks and Gripps shakes his head and Martin stares - but Vogel seems to be the shyest about it.

He’s shy in the sweetest of ways, she thinks. In the way his eyes brighten and head lifts when he spots her, and the way his mouth parts when she leans closer to speak to him, and his eyes continuously move from her eyes to her lips.

If she were still the girl she had been years ago - living for band practices that weren’t going anywhere and late-night clubs with bar fights, and drinking anything that had some kind of buzz to it where she’d wake up the next morning not remembering anything, but laughter and the bruises left on her hips. Before lying brothers and a disease that took everything she ever had and destroyed it all in front of her - maybe she’d play it cruel. Wait it out and tease and torture like she used to, like she taught herself to be good at.

But she looks at Vogel, sees _sweet_ and _new_ and _home,_ and the next time he she leans in she glances down at his lips and runs her finger across the plush of the bottom one. She thinks it’s cute how quickly his face goes red. She thinks she’d like to see them all like this.

Cross whistles in the background, Gripps’ howls, and Martin watches: intense and heavy lidded.

She laughs before she bites her lip to make herself stop.

.

She doesn’t like waiting, has already wasted too much time waiting she thinks, so when Martin looks at her next, in the way he does where she can never tell exactly what he’s thinking - twenty miles down from their makeshift fire pit and she still wonders how it took her this long - she decided it’s the perfect time, so she leans in.

She presses herself up against his chest, one handing fisting his collar and pulling him down while the other pulls him closer by his waist. She lets pride fill her chest when she hears his breath stutter.

“You look like you’re waiting for something, Rowdy boy” she says, eyes shifting from blue eyes to pink lips and back and forth because they’re both so damn pretty and it’s not fair that she has to choose, “wanna share?”

She can feel the others watching them. Gripps and Cross already piled into the van with Vogel trying to see over them, and the mental image is enough to turn the edge of her lips up into a smirk as she leans in closer, until Martin’s lips are only a breath away and she swears she can already taste them.

“Yeah,” Martin starts, voice gravely in the way that always makes her melt, that sounds like promises and hope, a new life and _home_ , fondness turning to something hot and red and consuming, and she can see he’s not holding back any more, choosing to take in the same way as her, “you.”

His lips are on her’s before she realizes, and it’s messy and too quick with her hands moving down his back and his twisting through her hair.

When they finally break apart they realize she’s backed him against the van, the area around is too silent, and there are the tops of three heads barely visible through the side window.

She licks her lips, smirks, nods her head towards the van door and says, “Well, we don’t want them to feel left out, do we?”

And it’s worth it, all of it, to see the way Martin’s eyes light before they take on a consuming kind of dark.

When his hand moves for the handle he’s smirking, and she throws her head back with a laugh as he pulls her in behind him.

.

They’re laid out on the floor of the van, limbs sprawled on top of limbs and heartbeats all still too quick when she says, “This is where I want to be,” before turning her head to face Martin and then tracing her eyes over each of them, “always.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Gripps’ says, and Cross lifts his hand up just enough to lightly smack Gripps’ arm. Vogel giggles and begins to lightly kick at where he can reach the top of Cross’ head.

Martin sighs, but it’s fond more than it is tired, and says, “Boys,” as a warning that brings the light kicks and slaps to an end.

Amanda can’t help herself, she laughs. Small giggles becoming contagious until they’ve spread through them all, heads falling back onto the van floor and discarded clothing being tucked beneath them as the cool of the metal begins to leak in.

It hits her, finally, that they’re her’s and she’s theirs- they found each other and chose to stay.

For once the world doesn’t feel like it’s out to get her, to stab her with anymore imaginary knives, have any more healthy brother’s lie about being sick, or isolate her in a small empty house she’s too afraid to leave.

Amanda takes a breath - remembers arms linked begging her to stay, heavy glances, kind jokes, gentle reassurances - leans her head onto Vogel’s shoulder, rubs her legs up against Cross’ and Gripp’s as Martin wraps himself around her left side, and finally lets herself sink into it. Sink into home in four bodies and a house in van that never stops running.

She takes it all in, the risks, the belonging, the healing, the hiding, and sinks.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos are much appreciated!


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